This exhibition was set in motion when Keegan was invited to have a solo show at the gallery. The fact that the artist lives in New York, but would exhibit on the other side of the country during a presidential election year, provided the foundation for this project. 

Last spring, Keegan along with assistants, Kenny Anderson and Erin Fetherman, created a mini-version of the 1986 fundraiser, Hands Across America. The original event consisted of approximately 7 million people holding hands between Battery Park, New York and Long Beach, California to raise money for America's homeless population. Keegan drove from New York to New Mexico along a route loosely aligned with the map followed in '86, making sculptural casts of the hands of various pre-selected mayors as well as the hands of a small selection of people met during these travels. 

After completing this road trip, Keegan became more interested in looking back at 1986 (the United Nations-sanction "International Year of Peace"). The works within this exhibition although initially influenced by Hands Across America, were further generated by interviewing a variety of artists, musicians, and writers about their experiences in visiting America, or living in New York and LA at this time, along with additional research on this moment in recent history. With the artist noting that "Over this past year, time seemed to continuously shift between 1986 and 2008, with healthy doses of interwoven flashbacks to 1968."

In conjunction with the exhibition there will be a series of events on Fridays and Saturdays from September 12 to 27, including a concert, lectures, a performance, panel discussion, screenings and a solo project by Veronica Blaha. Please contact the gallery for event details or see the calendar of events below. Additionally, a forthcoming artist book, AMERICAMERICA published by Printed Matter will be released and available at the gallery. The book is an independent project, but the content of this publication directly informed this exhibition.